By Robert Haugh
Last night, the Santa Clara City Council had a study session to discuss business taxes and other possible revenue measures for the November 2022 ballot.
The City staff spent a lot of time discussing a variety of business taxes on the following list:
Vice Mayor Raj Chahal led the charge for an employee head count tax. He said he’s wanted to create one since he took office in 2019.
Chahal singled out three companies that he wants to pay millions more with a head count tax. Those companies are Nvidia, Intel and AMD. He said they have a combined market cap of nearly a trillion dollars.
“They can easily afford a few million dollars here and there,” said Chahal. “It’s nothing. It’s peanuts.”
Silicon Valley Central Chamber of Commerce President Christian Pellecchia called in during public testimony and said that Santa Clara is a business friendly city and should stay that way. He asked the Council to make that goal a priority as the City studies business taxes.
The Council voted unanimously for Pellecchia’s request. But Chahal didn’t seem happy about it even though he voted for it.
Chahal joined Councilmen Anthony Becker and Kevin Park who want to figure out ways to tax data centers more.
The three of them said an employee head tax would not cost data centers much since they have few employees. So they want to study how to single out data centers for special fees or taxes to raise more revenue from them.
Below is the timeline that City staff laid out last night for moving forward. We’ll follow this issue as it develops over the coming months.
[…] Last year, Chahal singled out three companies that he wants to pay millions more with an employee head tax. Those companies are Nvidia, Intel and AMD. He said they have a combined market cap of nearly a trillion dollars. […]
Raj should look at history. His idea is not unique or original. They did this in Seattle in 2017.
“Less than a month after the Seattle City Council unanimously passed a “head tax” ordinance that would have levied a $275 per employee tax on Seattle businesses making more than $20 million a year, the same council voted to repeal that head tax Tuesday, in a 7-2 vote.”
And the idea that large corporations have a few million laying around for him to spend is just silly. How does he think they became a large profitable corporation, by being careless with stockholder’s money?
Chahal just flushed his run for mayor down the can just like the 49ers have done with their Dust Bowl.
Chahal and York should collaborate on a book How To Get Involved in Politics and Not Be A Loser.